Second Match Day

Tuesday dawned bright but cool - good weather for this second pool match day, although sadly (especially for spectators) there was some rain later during some of the matches.  It also got windier as the day went on, which made life difficult for both spectators and players.  Today was another early start for me, and so I went straight to the Oasis of Silence at 8am.  No players turned up for the devotional time but three of us spent some time sharing and praying, and later a few people called by.
After that Dave C and I met to discuss progress so far, and planned the rota for the final week.  Now that we know how things are working out in practice we were able to tailor-make this much more than we'd been able to do with the initial rota - it's amazing how things differ between planning and practice, especially when practical experience is added.
My next task was to make my second trip of the tournament to the BBC Radio Surrey studios.  This time it was to record a "60 second sermon" to go out on next Sunday morning's religious programme.  The idea behind this is that local ministers distill their Sunday sermon for that day into 60 seconds - I remember doing one of these when I last lived in this area and found it a challenge (! - those that know me will understand the explanation mark!) - but, as I won't actually be preaching anywhere this coming Sunday, I wrote a 'thought for the day' type of talk, linking illustrations from sport with one aspect of our practical faith, using the parable of the sheep and the goats as my text.
Another brisk walk followed, in order to get back to Surrey Sports Park in time to do some wandering around before the matches started.  As last Friday, there were 6 pool games in all today, with the first match kicked off at 12noon, with the 6th one doing the same at 6:30pm. They were again good matches - for those who know rugby, apparently women's rugby has a lot less kicking and a lot more running when compared to the men's game.  It is still a very fast and physical game, though, requiring a mixture of strength, speed and agility on top of all the technical skills.
I wasn't able to stay for the last matches though, as I had a speaking engagement at Andover Rotary Club this evening.  They'd invited me to speak about my work as a sports chaplain from Athens 2004 right through to today, so it seemed appropriate to attend in my Women's Rugby World Club uniform rather than dressed more smartly with my clerical collar.  As I'd missed the matches involving my pool teams, I kept my mobile phone on silent and, after texts from WRWC chaplaincy colleagues, was able both to keep in touch with what was going on in Guildford and also begin my talk with the latest results!